A lot of people forget that Facebook is a business. Their main goal with their products and services will always be to make a profit. This explains the steady decline of organic reach over the last few years as the platform bids to increase its revenue.
Maintaining a presence through organic posting on the world’s largest social media network is no longer enough to boost sales and create a loyal following. Facebook has been pushing for brands to opt into their paid ads program and truth be told, their paid advertising is worth its weight in gold – that is if done correctly.
Including Facebook ads in your marketing toolbox is a great way to reach potential customers that are beyond your logistics bounds. That said, especially for beginners, it is understandable to be worried about the idea of sinking precious marketing money on any social media platform.
If you are a brand about to embark on a new marketing chapter for your operations, you have come to the right place. Below are tried-and-tested tactics that can fool-proof your Facebook marketing campaign:
Define Your Goals
We understand that it is exciting to dive head-first into creating amazing images and shooting engaging videos. But before you carve out a budget for creatives, it is important to step back and think about the purpose of your campaign.
Do you want to establish your unique brand voice in the market?
Do you want to attract potential customers?
Do you want to start a conversation with your potential clients?
These are just a few questions that determine the type of campaign objective that you choose. Up until recently, Facebook had three main objectives – awareness, consideration, and conversion. Gradually they are introducing a more simplified version and now have 6 main objectives: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App promotion, and Sales
Choosing the campaign objective that aligns with your overall goal makes it easier to produce actionable results and generate data that guide future campaigns.
Establish Your Audience
It cannot be stressed enough, knowing your audience and understanding where in the buying journey they are in is at the heart of a successful Facebook advertising campaign. Your audience can steer the type of objective that you choose, the creatives that you use, and copy that you write for the ad.
When setting up the audience also keep in mind the traffic temperature. If you are targeting cold audiences (reaching people who don’t know you or have engaged with your brand) naturally you will be using interest-based audiences or lookalike audiences and your messaging should be positioned in a way that speaks to the pain points and needs of that audience.
If you are retargeting audiences that have engaged with your brand then you will be using custom audiences of past leads or audiences of those who have watched your videos or engaged with your page in the past. Naturally the tone and messaging will be much different than those who don’t know, like, or trust your brand yet.
As with Facebook’s campaign objectives, the platform also provides targeting tools that allow brands to segment their audience based on:
- Location
- Age
- Demographics
- Interests
If Possible, Use Video
Video content has become all the rage over the last few years. This form of content allows potential customers to experience a product or service to a capacity unheard of when using just an image. Not to mention you can create custom audiences of those who watch your videos and later use them for retargeting!
Producing video content isn’t the easiest – but trust us it is well worth the results, and don’t assume that professional video is needed, selfies work just as well! The best thing to do here is to be authentic and provide valuable information!
Track, and Adjust
Like most marketing strategies, Facebook requires a level of testing. The platform provides an analytic feature that allows users to track specific results that are relevant to their campaign. Sadly enough after the recent IOS updates tracking in the platform alone has not been great. Make sure you are using UTM parameters along with something like google analytics or a third-party tracking software to track results more accurately!
Taking these results and crafting subsequent campaigns based on the previously gathered data is an easy, actionable, and effective way to foolproof your campaigns.
With hope, the guide above can demystify Facebook ad campaigns for you and your team. The value of Facebook is undeniable but it is up to you to hone it to be useful for your business. There is no one-size-fits-all in marketing – and the same is true for marketing on Facebook.
So take the plunge, the water is warm and ready for you to launch your first campaign!
I hope this helps you get your Facebook ads going or moving in the right direction! If you need a helping hand and looking for a done-with-you program make sure to check our coaching program here. If you are a business already using Facebook ads to grow and you are looking for a done-for-you solution to scale your ads check out The Agency here!